Where parenting and Asperger's Syndrome meet

The Key to a Happy Life

Resentment, disappointment, annoyance, frustration, and a sense that everything in the world is unfair and fundamentally wrong, all stem from having expectations that it should be other rather than accepting what it really is. We spend far too much time looking at where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and where we think we should be, and not enough time living in the here and now and grasping what is right in front of us.

Having expectations when you’re a parent is fatal.

Last night, Lizzie went out to see the new James Bond film and have a pizza, leaving me looking after Izzie. ‘Great,’ I thought. ‘She’s been awake all day, she’s behaved like a gem, and I actually got more of her Sweet Potato Bake in her than on her, so she’ll be tired and contented. I’ll have her in bed by seven, cook some dinner, and have some much-needed time to myself. I’ll spend an hour on the Xbox and a couple of hours writing. Awesome. I’m looking forward to my evening.’

Fatal.

The fact it took me three hours to get her to sleep on Saturday and four hours on Sunday should have indicated that you can’t bank on a bedtime, but I somehow forgot this rudimentary aspect of parenting in the expectation of a restful evening. So when it took me from six till ten to get her to bed, trying milk, water, rocking, singing, reading aloud, dummy, teething gel, Calpol, cuddles, TV, hypnotism (which made her laugh), teddy bear, womb sounds, and ultimately she fell asleep from exhaustion, I was pissed. I mean, seriously pissed.

It was no fault of Izzie’s – she’s a baby – it was my fault. I hadn’t managed my expectations to fit reality, and the reality is that my time belongs to the baby, and any extra I get to myself is a bonus, not a given. Expecting you can have an independent existence in the first six months of a baby’s life is just barmy. Get on with what you can when you can, and accept that what you can’t you simply can’t. If I had no expectations of the evening, I wouldn’t have had a problem – I’d probably even have been happy.

I think that’s as good a lesson as any for life in general.

As a kid, I wanted to be a famous author. Everyone told me I would be, because that’s what you tell a four-year-old, and I accepted it because you believe everything an adult tells you. But as I grew older, they kept saying it. When I was ten, my grandfather told me that not only was I going to be an author, I was going to be one of the greatest authors in the world. When I was thirteen, my teacher told my parents I’d be on This Is Your Life one day. When I was seventeen another teacher told me I had a gift and it was my duty to share it with the world. Everyone – family, friends, educators, peers – thought I would go on to be the most successful thing ever to come out of the little town of Frimley, population 5,000.

I therefore lived my life with the unshakable expectation that I’d be a famous author at eighteen. I saw future me as a rich, successful author living in the city, attending movie premieres and society parties, frequenting all the best theatres, museums and art galleries the world had to offer. Essentially, all glitz, glamour and sophistication. Monaco, Cannes and Val D’Isere – that was going to be my life.

Skip eighteen years ahead and you find me a balding, pot-bellied autistic guy on antidepressants who lives in his partner’s house in a village on the edge of nowhere and has spent his life working in shops, office administration, domestic care and call centres. There’d be nothing wrong with it if it it wasn’t so far away from where I expected to be.

In my twenties, I couldn’t stand that my life didn’t match my plan for it. Why the hell wouldn’t anyone publish my novels? How could I possibly live the rest of my life an unknown? I was meant to be special, damn it – everyone said so. So why am I broke and alone? I spent my twenties writing novels and waiting for my life to begin.

It took me until my thirties to realise that my life had begun – and begun many years ago – it simply differed from my expected path. I still write my novels, still try to get them published, and sometimes I do feel as though the parade is passing me by, but I’m less discontented about the whole thing. I hope they get published, but I’m not suffering unduly because they’re not – it’s just the way my life has worked out. And there’s nothing wrong with my life.

The life I’m comparing it to – the successful me with the apartment in New York and the A-list friends – is nothing more than a fantasy. How can I feel bad that I’m not living the life of a person that never even existed anywhere but in my head? It’s like getting upset because the sky isn’t green – it never was nor could be green, so what’s the point of those tears?

My advice to anyone feeling they’ve not lived up to their potential is: don’t look at where you think you ought to be, look at where you are, because if it’s anything like my life, it’s not bad at all, just different. Disappointment comes from looking at the future and remembering the past, comparing your situation with what it was and how you think it should be. When I was eighteen, the thought of living in a little village, unknown, with a baby, and London a hundred miles away, was intolerable; at thirty-six, it’s pretty darn great. Live in the moment, appreciate the present for what it is – your life – and remember that those other lives you’re comparing yours to aren’t real.

So long as there’s air in our lungs, blood in our veins, and the sun is still up there somewhere, even if it’s hidden in cloud, we’re doing okay.

That’s the key to parenting, and to life itself: no expectations. Life and babies refuse to conform to preconceived notions. The sooner you can make peace with that, the happier you’ll be.

And if you’re still not happy, here’s Izzie asleep in a giraffe onesie to cheer you up!